TWELVE

She gulped at the air like she had been holding her breath under cold water for a dangerous length of time. She drew her arms and legs into herself and shuffled up the bed and into the corner, dragging the bedclothes with her. Being uncovered within the room was unbearable.

She stared at the walls and the furnishings, peeked around the edges of the bed, and saw only those outmoded articles of furniture within the tacky, scruffy walls, and nothing else. There was no one on her bed and no one in her room.

At least no one you can see.

She stood up on the bed. Took the duvet with her and tottered down the mattress to hit the light switch on the wall beside the door to get the ceiling light on.

Leaning her back against the wall, she peered into the space under the desk, scrutinized the gap between the bedside cabinet and the mattress, assessed the curtains for a bulge in case someone had tried to conceal themselves against the locked windows.

There were no bulges, and no one crouched under the desk or lying on the floor beside her bed. The room was as empty as it had been before she fell asleep with the lights on.

The lights!

Who had switched the lights off? Someone had been in here.

A presence.

A presence that could kill the light.

What else could it kill?

Stephanie looked down at the sheets. Nothing rustled beneath her bed anymore. Nothing had crawled out from under there. The room was sealed. The room was locked.

And you’re locked inside it.

She leapt off the bed and made sure to land clear of an area that an arm might reach into from under the bedframe, with a hand swiping about.

She stared into the empty space beneath her bed: floorboards, a multitude of dust rabbits, a section of red rug, the plain wall in shadow.

She moved to the curtains and yanked them aside to look at the grubby glass of two locked sash windows.

Bent over, her hands placed on the table to support her weight, she breathed in deeply, exhaled, breathed in. She stared at the empty black grate of the fireplace. At the long unused iron hearth, set between two Doric pillars of hardwood, painted a creamy colour. Impossibly, just impossibly, the voice had come out of there.

Across the hallway, her neighbour’s door opened, swung inwards and banged against an item of furniture.

Stephanie flinched and clasped her hands to her mouth. Her face screwed up but she was too frightened to cry. The coming together of noises and movements and energy that should not be, that could not be, seemed to merge into a critical mass around her.

Heavy footsteps crossed the dark corridor and paused outside her door. The round door knob quickly turned: once, twice, three times. The plastic handle rattled loosely inside the wood.

‘Who is it?’ she said to the door in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

There was no answer. But whoever had turned the handle, whoever had tried to enter her room, must still be there, outside, listening. She’d heard no footsteps retreat.